Over at the Journal today you will find a story called "Awkward Spot For Citi's CEO," which details the various awkwardness encountered by Mike Corbat since he took over as Chief Executive Officer, following Vikram Pandit's awkward ousting. There is also a delightful bonus round of awkwardness that comes as a postscript to the article, but we'll get the that later. First, why are things slightly awk for Corbat? Well, for starters, he knew that Pandit was going to be unexpectedly and unceremoniously fired long before VP did, including the entire time they were on a business trip together. The whole time they were flying over there together, having dinner together, meeting with clients together, taking in shows and doing touristy things when they had downtime from the conference together, he knew Pandit was about to get hit by a truck. No one blames Corbat for Vickles getting canned but, at the same time, there is a feeling by a few at Citi that you'd have to be some kind of monster to look a person in the eye and say "Sure, a trip the the Zen Temples sounds great," and take in the cherry blossoms and drink sake and do karaoke and fight over who is Scarlett Johansson and who is Bill Murray with him all the while knowing what was going to happen when you got home. For Vikram Pandit, a trip to Tokyo for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank conference last month seemed routine. But Michael Corbat, the longtime Citigroup executive who joined Mr. Pandit there, knew better. Unbeknown to Mr. Pandit, Citigroup Chairman Mike O'Neill had told Mr. Corbat that the board could seek Mr. Pandit's resignation as chief executive and hand the job to Mr. Corbat, according to people familiar with the situation. A day after Messrs. Pandit and Corbat returned to New York, that is exactly what happened. A host of financial, competitive and regulatory issues confronts the 52-year-old Mr. Corbat atop the nation's third-biggest bank by assets. But no task is more critical than soothing workers unsettled by the way the board ousted Mr. Pandit and his longtime right-hand man, John Havens, who ran the investment bank and served as president and chief operating officer. The effort is made even more delicate by Mr. Corbat's proximity to Mr. Pandit in the days before the coup. Executives say they don't blame Mr. Corbat for Mr. Pandit's overthrow, though some wondered how Mr. Corbat was able to sit through the IMF meetings knowing what was to unfold. Additionally awkward is the fact that there has been chatter around the office and scrawled on the walls of the men's room that there's only enough room in this Citi for one guy named Mike, and it's not Corbat. Adding to Mr. Corbat's challenges is the perception among some insiders that he is overshadowed by Mr. O'Neill. Employees have privately joked that of the two Mikes, it is Mr. O'Neill who is truly in charge. People close to Mr. O'Neill dispute that notion and say he has spent little time at his Citigroup office in the past month. Finally, you have the awkwardness of Mike not only knowing his colleague Vikram was going to be fired, but that his colleague and friend, John Havens, was getting the boot himself, which may or may not have caused auxiliary awkwardness for Corbat on the home front. Mr. Corbat's position is all the more awkward given his close personal relationship with Mr. Havens. The two men spent time together outside of work, occasionally vacationing with their wives at Mr. Havens' Scotland estate. All good examples of things that could be characterized as awkward to be sure. But! The absolute most wonderful bit of awkwardness to be found in "Awkward Spot For Citi's CEO," is, without question, this:

As you all are well aware, from time to time we cover food eating challenges around these parts. We don't chronicle all the feats of gastrointestinal fortitude that come our way, though, because while we love you all, not all of your FECs constitute what we'd consider an actual challenge worth covering. As previously discussed, our high bar has everything to do with the first contest we ever wrote about (as a postmortem), which involved a man named Oyster Boy, who consumed 244 oysters in 1 hour at Ulysses, throwing down the gauntlet down for one of you to pick up, vis-à-vis goring yourself for sport. Do we really expect anyone to match OB in magnitude or strength of stomach lining? No, we do not. Having said that, "challenges" such as eating 8 vending machine items in 12 hours (or in an unlimited amount of time!) are not going to cut it. It's not an exact science but we look for FECs that are imaginative, topical, and/or represent a high degree of difficulty. (And while we wouldn't actually advise it, live streaming the whole thing would make our day.) Which brings us to today's challenge. It occurred at an investment bank in midtown and although it loses points for not letting us know ahead of time so that we could chronicle the thing in real time, there are a number of things we like about it. Intern vs. VP. [Redacted] intern's last day (ever?). A dozen donuts each from our friends at DD. 1 hour limit to finish...Intern: larger build, 6'1" and extremely ambitious. VP: fit and 5'8" with a vicious appetite. Identical donut selection includes: - 2 chocolate - 2 glazed - 1 sugar - 2 strawberry frosted - 2 chocolate frosted - 1 blueberry - 1 Oreo crumble - 1 Boston creme VP downed the whole thing in 13:31. Intern disappointingly tapped out shortly after at 9 donuts and a bite. Intern is feeling "terrible," is alternating between a sugar rush and mild depression, and wants to sleep under his desk. It's not clear what's going on in his mind and body. Besides looking very uncomfortable, he's having a hard time responding to questions with any answer besides "I don't know." He's buying drinks for everyone tonight. Obviously there's zero sense of urgency here as a result of getting a recap rather than doing it live. But! Twelve adult-sized donuts (as opposed to a bunch of munchkins)? Good. Thirteen minutes for the whole spread? Good. Pitting a superior against an underling (rather than making a couple of interns race each other)? GOOD. Take these ideas, particularly the last one and run with them. Feel free to come up with your own but at least just consider making founder vs. peasant/30 minutes/2 chocolate fountains each/70-100 items to dip/race to the finish happen.

Last Thursday afternoon, hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb, who is waging a proxy battle against Yahoo, made a simple request: that the board of directors fire CEO Scott Thompson, who had lied about having a computer science degree from Stonehill College, when in fact the academic fraud only graduated with a degree in accounting. Loeb wanted the job done by Monday at 12 noon, EST and as the deadline passed, it was clear the request was would not be honored. As a result, Loeb was forced to demand every single document related to Thompson's hiring at the company. Emails, heading hunting referrals, thoughts, feelings, the works. Most importantly, the résumé Thomspon submitted when applying for the gig. Did Loeb enjoy dragging this out? No. Did he take pleasure in watching the "carnage" unfold? Certainly not, and he's shocked and offended anyone would ever think that. Nevertheless, a computer science degree had been fabricated out of thin air and Loeb felt he owed it to shareholders to get some answers. And while Yahoo! has presumably not yet faxed over the documents he asked for, they did offer this: Apparently the Yahoo chief says he's being honest when he tells us no fake résumés were submitted to Yahoo because they never got any résumés, period. Yahoo‘s embattled chief executive, Scott Thompson, told the company’s senior management on Thursday that he never submitted a résumé or falsified his academic credentials, a person briefed on the matter said. [Dealbook]

As you may have heard, Summer 2012 was not the best of times for JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. On May 10, after having said that a Bloomberg story about one of its London traders making very large, very worrisome bets was but "a tempest in a teapot," the bank announced that said trader had lost approximately $2 billion. On May 11, it was suggested that Dimon's title of most loved-banker on Wall Street was up for grabs. On June 19, Dimon was forced to testify on Capitol Hill. In July 13, JPMorgan was forced to revise the $2 billion loss to $6 billion. Associates who surrounded Dimon during these days said that the stress was visibly wearing on him, and that it was arguably one of the worst periods of his career. And while senior executives logged long hours and gave up weekends and holidays to help deal with the fallout, gathering documents and unwinding trades and trying to manage the crisis, only one busted his ass to actually give Jamie Dimon what he needed: Jimmy Lee. After spending much of July 13 again explaining the trading loss to the media and to research analysts—including making the stunning admission that the traders in London may have intentionally mismarked the trades to make them look less egregious, a potential illegality that the Justice Department is still investigating—the exhausted Dimon got an unexpected call from Tom Brady, the star quarterback of the New England Patriots. (Jimmy Lee, a legendary sports fan, had arranged for it.) Brady reminded Dimon that even Super Bowl champs have bad days and told him “to hang in there.” And after thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it some more, snapped his finger and said, "I've got it- we need to get Tom Brady on the line." And then gathered his five secretaries in his office and told them to clear his and their schedules because they needed to get this deal done by the end of the day. And when he finally got Brady on the line, assured him that the call would be welcome and that it wouldn't be awkward* or seem out of left field. "Just tell him he's got this. Tell him that if banking or football were easy everyone would be doing it. Tell him that even on your worst day, you still get to go home and bang that little Brazilian of yours. No, wait, scratch that. Tell him you can't generate profits and be responsible for the losses at the same time. Tell him, 'Keep your chin, up, kid.' Tell him you're down by 7, you just took a huge sack, Gronkowski's got a broken leg and you're not wearing a cup. But there's still time left on that clock, Jamie D. And as long as there's time left on that clock, you're going to score a mother fucking touchdown. Tell him, 'Go get 'em, Tiger.' You still there, pal?" Jamie Dimon On The Line [VF]

Remember Debra Ryan? For those who need a refresher, she was the woman behind the man that was Sam Israel III, the hedge fund manager who, with the help of DR, faked his own death in 2008 to avoid the prison time that was coming his way as a result of scamming investors in the Bayou Group out of $450 million. Several months after Israel was caught, Ryan penned an article for Marie Claire, explaining that she'd gone to great, illegal lengths to help him stay out of the big house because of all the "blazing sex life" they had, which see wasn't ready to give up. Though she was clearly not ready to move on ("I should just see it at face value and say he [screwed] me," she noted. "But I can’t let go") one would have thought that time and the three years probation Ryan was sentenced to would have helped her get over the guy who used to sneak up on her "while wearing glasses on his penis."  Apparently, though, such is not the case, as evidenced by Debra's contribution to a new book about Israel by Guy Lawson called Octopus, in which we learn that she is still carrying a torch for the guy the burns nearly as the fire in both their loins. "The next morning was Debra's birthday. She and Sam woke and made love-passionate, frantic, intense love. But as soon as they joined up with the Nicholses the atmosphere turned claustrophobic once again. Debra wanted alone time with Sam. But the Nicholses wouldn't leave them be for even a moment. Left with no choice, the two couples went for a stroll through the historic section of Zurich...wandering the old city was pleasant and exciting for Ryan. "I was starting to have a nice time," Ryan recalled. "Sam always wanted to spend money on me but I wouldn't let him. but this time he took me to a nice clothing store and bought me a bunch of new clothes. He was a great shopper- he could pick out clothes from the rack and they'd fit me perfectly. As we walked in one store, Sam turned me around and grabbed my face and kissed me with so much passion. We started to make out in the store, on the spur of the moment. I had never done that before, and I have never done it since. It was the best kiss ever." Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street's Wildest Con [Amazon] Related: Claim: Sam Israel’s Investors Gave Him Money Because They Liked Animal-Loving Cokeheads Who Looked Good In Women’s Underwear And Cowboy Boots Related: Hedge Fund Manager Who Faked His Own Death Has A Few Theories About Other Famous Murders, Real And Imaginary

As you may have heard, things are not going so well for New York City* of late. Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn have been without power for days. A hundred or so houses that once stood in Queens are now rubble. Staten Island has been destroyed. Those living uptown and in other areas that emerged relatively unscathed are dealing with survivor's guilt. In spite of all that, Mayor Bloomberg has declared that the Marathon, scheduled for Sunday will go on, a decision that has been met with considerable outrage by people who believe the considerable resources that go toward putting on the race should be put to more critical use elsewhere, that the city does not need the strain of putting up an additional 40,000 people, that the supposed economic benefit would be a drop in the bucket of what NYC needs, that the generators sitting in Central Park right now could be helping those sitting in darkness, and that considering dead bodies are still being pulled of the water, it's generally "too soon." One guy who'd beg to differ? Ed Koch. Twenty-five years out of his mayorship, he still gets these people and while the media would have you believe holding the marathon has caused an enormously heated debate, that's bull. New Yorkers want this and if Koch were still King? He'd be throwing a god damn parade come Sunday. “I’m telling you — and I think I’ve got pretty good judgment in this matter —that the people of New York City want the marathon to be run, and I applaud what the mayor is doing,” Koch told CNBC. “I think the media is creating a fuss that doesn’t exist, and that the people of New York City want this marathon,” he said on “Fast Money.” “If I were mayor, I would be doing exactly the same thing.” Koch, who served as mayor from 1978 to 1989, said that he faced the same decision when the city was near bankruptcy and still threw a ticker-tape parade for the Yankees following their World Series win. The parade came despite opposition from the media. “I said, ‘New York Times, you have your head screwed on wrong.’ What the people of New York City need is a celebration, something that will lift their spirits, and there’s nothing comparable to the marathon with respects to lifting the spirits of this city,” he said. NYC Marathon Must Go On, Ex-Mayor Koch Says [CNBC] *And the East Coast in general, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba.